Monday, December 22, 2014

This author's claims fall prey to his own suggestive criticism of theism. The reason that higher education in the sciences and philosophy purportedly reduces religious belief has as much to do with contemporary popular antitheistic indoctrination in those fields as any supposed increase in knowledge, much less baseline intelligence.

In other words, you send young, malleable minds away from their social/familial roots when they are wanting to strike out on their own and make their way as independent adults (i.e., college age), and you put those minds into environments openly hostile to religion as most secular academic settings are today, and it is no surprise that the result is the lessening of religious belief amongst those who come out of those institutions.

And because of this phenomenon, it is also extremely socially unpopular to be strongly religious amongst highly educated and intelligent people today (I should know). The amount of ignorant, bigoted treatment religious people get amongst educated colleagues is inversely proportionate to those aspiring irreligious folks who run is less educated, less secularized circles.

In both cases, the argument is fallacious, trying to establish suggestive causation where none exists. He even admits the argument is fallacious ("correlation does not equal causation") but nonetheless moves full ahead suggesting that it does in this case. I point it out in case someone finds the suggestions somehow compelling--the basis for the argument applies equally to its antithesis (i.e., the claims of indoctrination and the desire for social acceptance).

Further, the same can be said of his claims for why intelligent religious people defend their beliefs (i.e., because we want to rationalize what we already irrationally believe). That's just human nature, and it applies equally to whatever we believe/hold dear, be that theism or antitheism. At the end of the day, we are all human beings trying to grapple with problems bigger than we can actually fully grapple with. This means antitheist or theist, you will believe things without good reason, you will rationalize things you already believe, and you will make logical jumps and leaps of faith based on your existing understanding of life, the universe, and everything.

This article is all boring, boilerplate contemporary antitheist arguments that are chock full of both fallacies as well as healthy doses of ignorance and prejudice, and the only way they make sense is if you already agree with his conclusions.

There has recently been circulating that Pope Francis "broke from Catholic teaching" on whether animals will go to heaven. I have yet to be able to find a reliable reference that has the quotes in context. The closest I've found is this America Magazine article, but it cites the NYT article on the subject. I still can't find anything close to an official published text, but let's assume Pope Francis' words are being reporting in good faith. What does it mean? Does it really somehow definitively change Church teaching?

As the NYT and America article allude to, the short answer is no. The Pope made an off-the-cuff remark to comfort a child. He did not "declare" anything, much less define it infallibly (ex cathedra). I am typically not one to go around trying to reinterpret the Pope's words, but the brouhaha ensuing from so little substance here is just too much. (And also, a friend of mine asked me to share my thoughts on this blog.) So here you go. ;)

Doctrinal authority/certainty is a very nuanced topic in Catholic theology. There are degrees of certainty with regards to Church teaching. I try to summarize them in a prior post on this blog about theological grades of certainty. I really do recommend reading it, not because I think my writing is awesome but because I have used reliable Catholic sources to help summarize the subject. I won't restate it all here. If you read it, it will definitely help you understand where the Pope's remarks fall in our view of things.

Now back to the subject at hand.. Certainly we can hope and wish that we will somehow be reunited with our loved animals, but that is a far cry from making any kind of authoritative definition on the matter. Personally, I could see such a position being more plausible with regards to the General Resurrection than to heaven--because that is bodily resurrection, and it would fit better that some animals we love could be bodily resurrected (without implying that they have immortal spirits/souls, which I think is pretty indefensible from a Catholic point of view).

Many people get pretty sentimental on this topic, but sentiment is not a good way to discover and understand truth. Many say, "if my [pet] isn't in heaven, then it isn't really heaven, and I don't want to go there" or some such. I would suggest that these people ought to be more concerned that they themselves make it to heaven rather than worry about their pets. It is not a little presumptive to treat the question as if it were just a matter of what we would like our own personal heaven to be like. St. Paul cautions us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." We are not even assured of our own presence in heaven, so to make definitive pronouncements about the presence of our personal pets seems a bit off, to say the least.

Let me put it this way. Traditional Catholic teaching--which is founded in centuries of solid Scriptural, theological, and pastoral reflection and shouldn't be easily dismissed based on personal whims or desires--is such that 1) animals are different from us; they do not have immortal souls like we do, and 2) neither do animals have moral faculties (and so neither can sin nor need redemption, in the sense of from personal/original sin). 3) There is, to my knowledge, very little foundation in our Tradition to claim that individual animals (e.g., my pet cat Aelfric) will be part of the Resurrection, much less in heaven prior to that as some sort of spiritual being.

So anyone, the Pope included, who wishes to offer a theological opinion to the contrary, has a lot of work to do to provide support for such an opinion. And for it to be taken seriously, it has to be more than "because I want my pet" or "because it wouldn't seem fair" or "because it would make little Johnny sad" or anything like that. It has to be more than some vague belief in God's goodness or broad extrapolations from a phrase or two in Scripture. It should square and be reconciled with what we do know as definitively revealed (see theological grades of certainty) and ideally fit well even with less definitive teachings.

IN ANY CASE, characterizing the pope's off the cuff consoling remarks to a child as some dramatic change in Catholic teaching is nothing but absurd sensationalism.

As I said, while many would classify me as a conservative (though I see myself as a firm centrist), I am not one of those purported reactionary conservatives who feels threatened by Pope Francis. I love Pope Francis. I love his pastoral style. I love how he challenges my preconceptions and makes me reconsider them. I love how he leads by example. I love how he emphasizes Gospel witness.

I also love Father Benedict, and Pope St. John Paul's writings (especially Evangelium Vitae) were instrumental in my joining the Church. Despite ignorant characterizations to the contrary, the traditional Catholic position on this question of animals going to heaven or not (and related considerations) has absolutely zero to do with some kind of animosity towards creation, nor is it some weird desire to feel special/different/superior to the rest of creation. It is simply a matter of thinking through the consequences of what we know of Divine Revelation and nature itself.